I first ignored this book for cost reasons ($75!) and because I thought it would only be an addition to Laurie Anderson's album Landfall with Kronos Quartet (see here). But when I found a used copy for less than half the amount, I couldn't resist.
And I was wrong; this book has much more to offer than just Landfall. "All the Things I Lost in the Flood" (left: book cover, right: slipcase) is Laurie's personal retrospective -- not on all her works (that would be too much), but on many of them. As the subtitle says: "Essays on Pictures, Language and Code". She lost a lot of things when her basement got flooded, but she doesn't whine after them, she takes the misfortune as an opportunity to look back, sometimes with a touch of irony, sometimes with a touch of melancholy, usually not deadly serious. She offers views on her life and family background and her start as an artist, and what we get here is more than Roselee Goldberg's Anderson biography from 2000 had to offer.
Laurie speaks about the first-person narrative in her performances which, as she puts it, might be personal but never private. We hear about some important collaborators without whom she wouldn't have been able to design and assemble several of her technical works -- like sound designer and technician Bob Bielecki who built several of Laurie's modified violins and other stage gadgets, the Headphone Table (1978) or the Talking Statues; or Hsin-Chien Huang who collaborated for the interactive virtual room installation Aloft (2017). She talks about how and why she uses projections and stage gadgets.
Every chapter starts with a short text in a computerized phonetic alphabet Laurie developed herself. She writes about and documents not only the works itself in essays and pictures, she also gives some information about their making, sometimes spiced up with nice little anecdotes. In one of her earliest performances, Duets On Ice (1975), she played a modified violin while her shoes where frozen into two blocks of ice; the performance ended when the ice was molten away. She performed this at some public places in a couple of Italian cities. An Italian guy obviously traveled after her and was always present at her appearences and unaskedly and rich in gesture explained to the (usually small) audience what she was doing and why she probably did it. Must have been an early fan.
She tells how at the Nova Convention in 1978 she met William S. Burroughs who, with his unforgettable voice, later appeared in "Sharkey's Night" on her album Mister Heartbreak. A sample from this track (the lines "listen to my heartbeat") were transformed into a tune in the film Home Of The Brave (where she also slow dances with him across the stage). Alas, she does not tell us why this film was never released on DVD although it was announced. However, on Youtube you can watch a full version, technically perfect because obviously taken from the laser disc. The Nova Convention was also the place where Laurie discoverd the harmonizer which she used to transfer her voice into a sort of male voice, "the voice of authority", as she calls it. Later, Lou Reed gave this character the name "Fenway Bergamot". Other parts of the book are about the "United States" performance, her works as artist in residence at NASA, her latest film Heart Of A Dog.
I have to admit that not everything Laurie did becomes completely clear to me, but that might be my problem. Her concerts for dogs, to name an example, doesn't make much sense to me. But obviously it was her beloved rat terrier Lolabelle who put this idea into her brain. Laurie's increasing connection to Buddhism is a permanent companion in the book. In the end, after the passing of Lolabelle, in the chapter "Time To Go", she fills several pages with chalk drawings of her dog's way through all stations of the Bardo (a topic she dealt with earlier already, see here).
The book, it has to be said, is physically heavy and formatted in square, which makes it unpleasant to hold; the text in small print makes it even worse ... well, you can't have it all. The best idea probably would be to put it on a table to read it. It's a very nice book, 320 pages, I enjoyed it, and probably it would also make a great Christmas gift, in case you still need one.
Laurie Anderson
All the Things I Lost in the Flood
Rizzoli Electra, 2018
ISBN-10: 9780847860555
ISBN-13: 978-0847860555
(This post was first published on manafonistas.de)
Jeder hat sich wohl schon mal die Frage gestellt, wozu man ein Live-Album braucht, wenn man das Studioalbum schon hat. Zwei Live-Alben liegen auf dem Tisch und zeigen, dass sie durchaus ihren Sinn haben können.
John Fogertys neues, lange angekündigtes Studioalbum lässt weiter auf sich warten. Statt dessen, sozusagen als eine Art Ansichtskarte zwischendurch, gibt es ein Live-Album, mitgeschnitten irgendwann dieses Jahr im Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver.
Nichts wirklich Neues, eher ein "Greatest Hits", aber in jedem Fall eine gute Ergänzung zum kürzlich veröffentlichten Woodstock-Auftritt der Creedence Clearwater Revival (siehe auch hier). Denn genau darum geht es: John Fogerty feiert sein 50-jähriges Woodstock-Jubiläum mit alten CCR-Nummern und Stücken von seinen Soloalben. Dass er stimmlich nicht mehr die Durchschlagskraft des Woodstock-Auftritts hat -- sei's drum, man erkennt ihn trotzdem noch, und als Gitarrist hat er seit 1969 eine Menge dazugelernt. Mit von der Partie sind Johns Söhne Shane (Gitarre, Gesang), der inzwischen selbst ein respektabler Gitarrist geworden ist, und Tyler (Gesang), dessen Zukunft nach meinem Eindruck eher hinter den Kulissen zu liegen scheint, auch wenn ich schon schlechteren Gesang gehört habe. Kenny Aronoff am Schlagzeug trommelt wie gewohnt Volldampf, Bob Malone (keyboards) und James Lomenzo (bass) halten mühelos mit. Das Ganze klingt selbstverständlich anders als zu CCR-Zeiten: Es klingt so, wie John Fogerty die Stücke heute spielt. Auf eine Nummer wie "Rock'n'Roll Girls" hätte man verzichten können, aber die meisten Fogerty-Kompositionen sind und bleiben unkaputtbar.
Die Überraschung des Albums in der mir vorliegenden Doppel-CD-Version ("Walmart-exclusive"; und da Walmart keine ausländischen Kreditkarten akzeptiert, wird diese Version in Europa nur auf Umwegen zu beziehen sein) sind unmittelbare Woodstock-Memories: Coverversionen von "With A Little Help From My Friends", "My Generation", "Everyday People" (das mich heute genauso wie im Original nervt), "Dance To The Music" und "Give Peace A Chance", mit Soulgesang (Trysette Loosemore und Lavone LB Seetal) "wie echt" und ebensolchem Soulgebläse, sind zu hören, und das durchaus hörenswert. Der einzige Missgriff ist Shane Fogertys "Star-Spangled Banner"-Solo -- schräge Gitarrensounds mit viel Echo, aber es zeigt letztlich nur, wieviel mehr der Meister draufhatte. Na gut, das Stück hängt am Ende von CD 1 -- man hat sich wohl gedacht: Dort stört es am wenigsten.
Um die Verwirrung komplett zu machen, gibt es anscheinend zwei verschiedene 1-CD-Versionen des Albums; eines enthält die Woodstock-Nummern, ein anderes nicht. Im Zweifelsfall darauf achten, welches man bestellt. Es gibt das Konzert auch als DVD und Blue-ray Disc. Vor deren Veröffentlichung wurde das Konzert am 11. November (dem Veteran's Day) per Satellit in 500 ausgewählte amerikanische Kinos übertragen -- allerdings offenbar mit wenig Resonanz. Es gab kaum Werbung, zum Teil gab es technische Probleme, in etlichen Kinos erschien nur eine Handvoll Zuschauer.
Das zweite Album, ebenfalls eine Doppel-CD, ist merkwürdigerweise dichter an Fogerty dran als man vermuten könnte: David Byrnes American Utopia on Broadway.
Die Studioversion dieser Show war letztes Jahr unter meinen Jahres-Top-Ten. Die hier von Byrne und einer elfköpfigen Band präsentierte Live-Fassung aus dem Hudson Theater am New Yorker Broadway ist aber noch um einiges mitreißender, selbst ohne die Choreographie von Annie-B Parson.
Das liegt allerdings weniger an den Utopia-Songs, die streckenweise etwas gewöhnungsbedürftig waren, sondern -- und das verbindet dieses Album mit Fogertys -- an dem mindestens halben Dutzend alter Talking-Heads-Titel, die sich nicht nur fugenlos ins Programm einpassen, sondern den neuen Stücken an Power sogar noch überlegen sind. Es ist verblüffend, wie wenig Tracks wie "Burning Down The House", "I Zimbra" oder "Once In A Lifetime" gealtert zu sein scheinen, obwohl sie um die 40 Jahre auf dem Buckel haben.
Was soll man sagen: American Utopia on Broadway erinnert unweigerlich an Stop Making Sense, der für mich noch immer ein maßstabsetzender Konzertfilm ist. Und die Frage, ob man das Livealbum braucht, wenn man das Studioalbum schon hat, erledigt sich beim Hören von selbst. Ich kenne die DVD noch nicht, bin aber sicher, dass auch sie das Anschauen wert ist.
Sound engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug passed away yesterday night, Noember 5, 2019, at the age of 75.
ECM Records:
Jan Erik Kongshaug, recording engineer on many productions made in
Oslo at the Bendiksen, Talent, and Rainbow Studios has died, aged 75.
“Our first studio session together, and the beginning of a close
collaboration lasting nearly fifty years, was Afric Pepperbird in
September, 1970, with Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Arild Andersen and Jon
Christensen. We were all rather innocent beginners, then,” Manfred
Eicher recalls, “but listening to the playback shared a growing
awareness of participating in something special.”
Near the beginning of the ECM story, Jan Erik engineered the
influential series of solo piano recordings that included Chick Corea’s
Piano Improvisations. Vol, 1 & 2, Keith Jarrett’s Facing You, and
Paul Bley’s Open, To Love and, working closely with Manfed Eicher,
helped to realize the clarity and transparency of sound that would
become a hallmark of the label’s recordings.
“We experimented a lot then with microphone placements,” he recalled
in a 2007 interview, “But, almost from the beginning, we never had to
talk very much about technical things. A look or a gesture and I would
know what was needed.”
Though most of the work took place in his native Norway, Kongshaug
also contributed to ECM sessions at New York’s Power Station, where Pat
Metheny’s Offramp and Keith Jarrett’s Standards were produced, and to
the live recordings Personal Mountains and Sleeper of Jarrett’s quartet
with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen in Japan.
What a loss. But his recordings will remain. They are timeless.
